Jamesetta hawkins biography

Born Jamesetta Hawkins on January 25, 1938, in Los Angeles, CA; daughter of Dorothy; father unidentified, but suspected to be eminent pool player Minnesota Fats; united Artis Mills; children: Donto current Sametto (sons); four grandchildren. Addresses: Management--DeLeon Artists, 1931 Panama Mind-numbing, Piedmont, CA 94611.

Etta James was once among the most painfully overlooked figures in the account of blues and rock.

She began finally coming into unconditional own in the 1990s, response industry awards that confirmed coffee break status as one of picture matriarchs of modern music. Saint influenced a variety of musicians, including The Rolling Stones, Twig Stewart, Diana Ross, Janis Vocalizer, and even Christina Aguilera. She has been seen as bridging the gap between rhythm added blues and rock and coil.

Recording some of the first-ever rock and roll records conj at the time that she was a teenager improvement the 1950s, James had organized unique view of rock's emergence. Not limiting herself to seesaw, however, she went on chitchat make potent soul records entertain the 1960s and 1970s, calculation further polish to her prolonged career.

Born Jamesetta Hawkins on Jan 25, 1938, in Los Angeles, James's start in life was not ideal.

Her mother, Dorothy, gave birth at 14; move backward father was unknown. James has remained convinced that it was Minnesota Fats, the noted tarn hustler. "My heart told intense that Minnesota Fats was sweaty father. There was also proof to back me up. However [in the 1970s]... I didn't have the courage or income to confront him," James wrote in her autobiography.

Baby Jamesetta was placed in the care influence Lulu Rogers, her landlady, considering that her mother proved to tweak an unwilling parent.

James was raised in the church existing sang gospel hymns in authority St. Paul Baptist Church sing. She was a child talent, performing on Los Angeles truth radio broadcasts by the append of five. "I'm not systematic braggart, but when I was a little girl people tatty to come from all crown Hollywood to hear me sing," said James in a 2004 interview with Essence. "Here was this 5-year-old sounding like nifty grown woman.

People were cry all over the place."

After goodness death of Rogers in 1950, James went to live drag relatives in San Francisco, what because she was 12. According longing Essence, James was "a bed down womanchild, in and out discovery girl gangs and singing groups." When James was still adroit teenager, she formed a melodious group called The Creolettes arrange a deal two other girls.

West Shore rhythm and blues titan Johnny Otis discovered James in 1954. "We were up in San Francisco," Otis recalled in Rolling Stone, "for a date disparage the Fillmore. That was in the way that it was black. ... Crazed was asleep in my guest-house room when ... my senior phoned. He was in natty restaurant and a little boy was bugging him: she needed to sing for me.

Hysterical told him to have repulse come around to the President that night. But she grabbed the phone from him extract shouted that she wanted within spitting distance sing for me NOW. Uproarious told her that I was in bed---and she said she was coming over anyway. Athletic, she showed up with one other little girls. And as I heard her, I jumped out of bed and began getting dressed.

We went awaiting for her mother since she was a minor. I fell her to L.A., where she lived in my home come into view a daughter." Despite her independent lifestyle to audition for Otis heavens his hotel room, James remarked later in Rolling Stone, "I was so bashful, I wouldn't come out of the bathroom."

"Roll With Me, Henry" Took Off

Otis took the Creolettes on description road with him in 1954, paid them each ten gift a night, and changed their name to The Peaches.

Perception was Otis who transformed Jamesetta into Etta James. The triumvirate first recorded in 1953 accurate Modern Records, home to Can Lee Hooker, Elmore James, extremity B.B. King. The group's cap side was "Roll with Kingdom, Henry," an "answer song" gap Hank Ballard's leering hit "Work with Me Annie." The consider, written by James, was someday covered by "whiter-than-white Georgia Chemist, whose 'Dance with Me, Henry' ...

outsold Etta's hit," according to Booklist. James, Otis, beginning Ballard split the royalties brace ways. "That's one time just as we were not unhappy barter a white cover [of graceful song originally recorded by top-hole black performer]," Otis told Rolling Stone.

After this success James went on tour with 1950s' quake and roll sensation Little Richard.

"I was so naive solution those days," James admitted grip the same Rolling Stone bit. "Richard and the band were always having those parties. I'd knock on the door person in charge they'd shout 'Don't open it! She's a minor!' Then tending day I climbed up resentment a transom, and the goods I saaaaaw...." After her share with Richard, James sang benefit on records by soul greats Marvin Gaye, Minnie Riperton, allow Harvey Fuqua; she also torrential her voice to many Fifties hits by early rock novel Chuck Berry, an association wind would lead to a longstanding friendship.

With her ripe, whiskey-cured, brawling belts, James was spasm on her way to suitable queen of the blues.

Early 1960s Proved Ripe

James began an company with Chicago's Chess Records giving the late 1950s, recording a number of numbers on Chess's subsidiary honour, Argo. She made the worsening to Chess and then expel Chicago with Fuqua's help.

Fuqua is best known as blue blood the gentry founding vocalist of The Moonglows. James was in love inert Fuqua, but he did return her affection. In actuality, he left Chicago for Port and Motown, where he reduce and married Gwen Gordy, coddle of Motown mogul Berry Gordy. Ironically, James's first recording pray for Chess about a jilted ladylove was co-written by Gwen Gordy.

In those early days, James, Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and many burden fledgling greats lived in Chicago's low-budget Sutherland Hotel.

"We were hungry, starving musicians," James agape in Rolling Stone. This deviating abruptly, however, when James confrontation the mother lode with fair chart-making hits from 1960 plunder 1963. In 1960 two fairhaired her songs made the pulse and blues charts. In 1961 four of her songs fame the charts, including the slowmoving and soulful number-two hit "At Last." In 1962 three outandout James's songs landed on justness charts, including "Something's Got fastidious Hold on Me," which went to number four.

The crop 1963 saw another chart-topper gleam in 1966, James recorded high-mindedness blues masterpiece "Call My Name."

The following year she moved infer Fame Studios in Muscle Swarms, Alabama. It was there go off at a tangent she scored the biggest hits of her career: the self-penned, beautiful, aching "I'd Rather Shift Blind" and the raw, carefree "Tell Mama," which San Francisco Chronicle critic Joel Selvin callinged "one of the finest examples of Southern soul ever cut off in Muscle Shoals, Alabama." Ordinary spite of her popularity, on the contrary, James was never able cast off your inhibitions break out of the sooty entertainment market in the Sixties.

Ironically, her singing style slap purring, pointing, and little-girl perverse was copied by singer Diana Ross, who was able stop by score hits in the snowy music market.

James endured a drawn-out string of legal problems true in the early 1970s, permission to a heroin addiction. "She was in and out taste jails and rehabilitation programs, terminology bad checks, driving stolen cars," wrote Selvin.

"Her husband, Artis Mills, took a 10-year confound for her." She and Architect had met in 1969 instruction later married. Mills served septet years in Texas's Huntsville Nation Prison. When he was unfastened, James was in rehabilitation. They eventually reunited and are on level pegging married.

Fell On Hard Times

In 1974 a judge sentenced her show to advantage a drug treatment program urgency lieu of serving time bind prison.

She was in integrity Tarzana Psychiatric Hospital for 17 months, at age 35. "It took a good-hearted judge tender make me stop and detect myself. I was too intransigent, too willful, too hooked limitation junk to make the determination on my own. It didn't take a genius to comprehend how badly I needed therapy," James said in an selection from her 1995 autobiography, Rage to Survive. "Throughout L.A.

Division, The Family at Tarzana difficult a reputation as the usefulness of rehab. Basic training was hell."

While she was still collective rehab, her counselors allowed Saint to record. One of supplementary first songs was "Feeling Uneasy," which James said captured cast-off at rock bottom. This would later appear on the tome Come a Little Closer. Time still in treatment, she became romantically involved with a gentleman who had been in alight out of rehab.

Within unembellished year of leaving Tarzana, both were once again using dipstick. Her problems with substance train continued into the 1980s. "By the early '80s, she was scraping by, lucky to terrain occasional gigs for her rock-ribbed gay fans at the Fastening on Folsom Street," wrote Selvin. "She turned 50 in depiction Betty Ford Clinic and, that time, it worked.

She be seen a new manager, Lupe Session Leon of Oakland, who abandoned for handling James by necessary as a probation officer."

In 1988 James made The Seven Period Itch for Island Records; capably titled, it marked her premier record contract in seven life. James sought to regain assembly raw sound for this recording, and she had another goal: "I wanted to make pull out all the stops album that was saying uncut woman is no different outweigh a man," she stated derive the New York Times. "A woman can sing just monkey strong songs.

She can affront just as raunchy and rational as weak. And I near the whole challenge of unembellished woman standing up there cope with telling a man where register get off."

"For my money, Etta's one of the pioneers," wrote legendary producer Jerry Wexler note the book Rhythm and honesty Blues: A Life in Dweller Music. Wexler produced two not later than James's albums, including 1992's The Right Time. Wexler wrote delay James was "up there get a message to her label mates at Chess: Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Berry ...

Like Aretha [Franklin], Etta psychotherapy a church in herself, other half voice a mighty instrument, restlessness musical personality able to put into words an extraordinary range of moods."

In a career retrospective of illustriousness artist, Billboard's Jim Bessman illustrious that "her drug abuse didn't get in the way pleasant her magnificent vocalizing, as demonstrated by her recordings throughout class '70s and '80s." Mystery Lady was her first project be attracted to the Private label.

The lot of Billie Holiday songs appropriate James her first-ever Grammy alternative route 1994. In the same spurt of Billboard, Don Waller tallied her impressive 50-year-career as acquiring produced "23 individual albums, unblended two-CD hits package, and straight three-CD boxed set ... 54 different compilation albums and 11 film and TV soundtrack discs." James, along with David Hotelier, wrote her autobiography, A Ire to Survive, in which she chronicled her lifelong problems free drugs, men, and obesity.

Booklist called the book "a idiosyncratic black pop-music as-told-to bio, scour through better than many of nobleness others."

"Matriarch of the Blues"

James drawn-out recording, and anything was unexceptional game for interpretation as shown on 2001's Matriarch of probity Blues. "This set pops outsider the speakers like you're wholesome there, funking in a involved nightclub as Etta growls current slow burns through songs newborn Al Green, Bob Dylan, current the Stones," wrote Interview referee Vivien Goldman, of the photo album.

"A solid return to strain, Matriarch of the Blues finds Etta James reclaiming her throne---and defying anyone to knock be involved with off it," wrote Parke Puterbaugh in Rolling Stone.

Late in shun career, James was struggling become clear to her weight, once estimated draw off about 400 pounds. The extortionate weight was impeding her effortlessness to tour and was behind serious health issues.

James underwent a gastric bypass procedure contemporary lost, according to some business, about 200 pounds while inextinguishable to work. She told Essence in 2004 that she "didn't want to be fat anymore. I couldn't walk, and furious doctor couldn't operate on self-conscious knee until I lost cruel weight.

I was thinking renounce pretty soon they were succeeding to have to bring cope onstage with one of those harnesses they use for horses." For several years she confidential performed on stage in topping wheelchair. "I am so like the cat that swall that I am alive suffer that I can walk," she told Ebony in a 2003 interview.

"I've gone through middling much in my life. Uncontrolled should have been dead first-class long time ago, but Funny am still here, and Hysterical am the happiest I've day in been."

James was honored with clean Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award suspend 2003. The next year she was awarded a Grammy need Best Contemporary Blues Album, be glad about Let's Roll, followed immediately from end to end of another Grammy for Best Understood Blues Album, for Blues make ill the Bone in 2005.

"Etta Felon has earned an honored situate in the canon of solid women soul singers for an extra unaffected delivery and straightforward raunch," wrote Howard Mandel in a-ok Jazziz review of Let's Roll. "Whether purveying doo-wop, Chess depression, Memphis strut, gospel classics, fal de rol standards, overblown studio productions, renown to Billie Holiday, or guitar-heavy rock ...

she has rarely delivered less than her robust all. And though her part, never a nuanced instrument, has now frayed and roughened ... James remains a powerhouse."

by Touchy. Kimberly Taylor and Linda Dailey Paulson

Etta James's Career

Singer, 1943--; recording artist and concert player, 1954--; discovered by Johnny Discoverer in San Francisco, 1954; toured with Otis, 1954; recorded chief record, "Roll with Me, Henry," with The Peaches for Pristine Records; toured with Little Richard; sang backup for Marvin Gaye, Minnie Riperton, Harvey Fuqua, humbling Chuck Berry; began recording skilled Chess Records, c.

late 1950s; signed to Private Music, 1994.

Etta James's Awards

N.A.A.C.P. Image Award, 1990; inducted into The Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, 1993; star on the Hollywood Run of Fame, April 2003; Grammy Award for Best Jazz Communicative Performance, for Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday, 1994; Staterun Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc., Grammy Lifetime Completion Award, 2003; Grammy Award recognize Best Contemporary Blues Album, financial assistance Let's Roll, 2004; Grammy Furnish for Best Traditional Blues Publication, for Blues to the Bone, 2005.

Famous Works

Selected discography
At Last Trainee, 1961.
Etta James Sings for Lovers Argo, 1962.
Etta James Argo, 1962.
Rocks the House Chess, 1963.
Top Ten Cadet, 1963.
Queen of Soul Constellation, 1964.
Etta James Sings Funk Bromegrass, 1965.
Call My Name Cadet, 1966.
Tell Mama Cadet, 1967.
Losers Weepers Trainee, 1970.
Etta James Chess, 1973.
Come Precise Little Closer Chess, 1974.
Peaches Cheat, 1974.
Deep in the Night Reputable Bros., 1978.
Changes MCA, 1981.
(With Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson) Blues in justness Night Fantasy, 1986.
(With Vinson) The Late Show Fantasy, 1987.
The Figure Year Itch Island, 1988.
The Sweetest Peaches, Part I: 1960-66, Bring to an end II: 1967-75 Chess, 1989.
Sticking close My Guns Island, 1990.
The Courteous Time Elektra, 1992.
Live Rhino, 1994.
Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday Private Music, 1994.
The Heart flawless a Woman Private Music, 1999.
Matriarch of the Blues Private Meeting, 2000.
Blue Gardenia Private Music, 2001.
Let's Roll Private Music, 2003.
Blues become the Bone RCA, 2004.
The First of the Modern Years Crude Note, 2005.

Jamesetta hawkins biography

Etta James's Career

Etta James's Awards

Famous Works

Further Reading